Kick Drum Mic

[Mjury02]

Does anyone else use a speaker wired as a mic for their kick drum when playing live? Ours is attached to our drummer rack to help with set up time. As a band we like the sound of the speaker mic better than the Audix mike that came with the drum mic kit. Also, I haven't seen any other band locally that has done this. Here is a pic for reference.

[prd004]

Never tried it but Geoff Emmerick used it with great sucess on McCartneys bass once or twice, so it can't be all bad! Let me know if you ever get a recording with it so we can hear.

[Mjury02]

Will do.

[johndough247]

Studio and live engineers use them all the time...the most famous being Yamaha's Subkick (which is basically an NS-10 studio monitor's driver wired in reverse, encased in a drum shell). As the name implies, It adds a lot of bass and sub-bass frequencies and is a great supplement to a standard kick mic. I've used it mostly on recording live drums for R&B/Hip Hop tracks, with great results. So based on that experience, I don't think you'll get much definition, but they certainly bring the boom (As heard in the later Beatles stuff on bass).

[sonic assassin]

ive made my own sub kick. gives a lot of oomph that other mics cant. fun as a trick in a mix, but i cant see using it as the only mic on the kick. severe lack of definition.

[walker rosewood]

ah the ol' NS-10's. who doesn't have a pair of those lying around.

Speaker as mic? A novelty but with today's advanced mics, PA's, and DAW's I don't see why anybody would use it.

[rtslinger]

I had not heard of that before. Would like to hear it. If you can post it that would be great.

[Mjury02]

I see where both Walker and Johndough are coming from... With the band I play with, most rooms we play don't exactly need a whole lot of drum reinforcement, we play mostly small towns in central Illinois, where we could honestly get by without any drum mics, but you know how drummer's can get. So this seems to get the job done, with adding some extra boom, to the kick. Also we do our own sound, with minimal equipment, as far as compressors and eq's, and we have found using a mic like this is easier to get the sound we want. Any other time when we play a big gig, there is a soundman, and we use both the speaker mic and a normal kick drum mic. Once again, thanks for your input.

rtslinger, we currently don't have anyway to record. I've been GASing for one of those Zoom H2's, and I see one in my near future, once I get my fEarful 15/6 paid for, that is my next purchase, so when I do finally buy one, I'll post some sound clips of the drums during both soundcheck and within the whole mix.

[countrybass007]

the Yamaha Subkick is great. We got turned on to it by David Allen Coe's drummer when we heard how good his bass drum sounded.

[agreatheight]

+ 1 to the subkick. I recently did some tracks with a pro-drummer who used it and it sounded thunderous mixed in.